Fantastic Contraption is an amazingly fun and super compelling world building tool where you make contraptions that can get from point A to B, and it was recently announced as one of the games that’s going to be bundled with the launch of the HTC Vive. I first caught up with the developers Sarah & Colin Northway at PAX Prime last August, and I just recently had a chance to get some updates from Sarah at the Unity Vision Summit. She talks about the updates to the gameplay including streamers that help you visualize the physics of your contraption better as well as how they’ve been optimizing for fun and play by making it possible to turn your contraption into a musical instrument. She also talks about the mixed reality Twitch streams, some of her favorite stories of people playing around as well as some of her own personal experiences of the effect of time dilation in VR.
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Here’s the latest gameplay video published a few days ago:
Here’s an example of Mixed Reality Twitch Streaming
Fantastic Contraption featured on Made with Unity ad
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.034] Sarah Northway: I'm Sarah Northway of Northway Games, and we have teamed up with Radio Games to make a game called Fantastic Contraption. So it's going to be a launch title for the HTC Vive coming out April sometime. And it's been a wonderful whirlwind from our starting development last July, so like eight months maybe of development. And it's been so much fun. VR is just like amazing. I've never done anything this fun. So Fantastic Contraption is a building game. Very simple parts. You've got wheels that spin and you've got rods that you can stretch out to different lengths. And you use those to build some sort of contraption that takes a goal ball from your build area. And this is HTC Vive. So you're walking around your contraption and you're building. You're reaching up over your head to build things. So you need to take a goal ball from that area to somewhere else on the level. So a really simple kind of premise, but you can do so much. You can build catapults and tanks and, you know, strange sticks that fall over and happen to hurl the ball in just the right direction. We actually have an achievement for that now. I just put that in the game. So it's a very creative game and it allows people to really play with the space Especially in the Vive when you get to walk around and you can see your hands in front of you We've got a really simple like elegant kind of control system where really our only verb is grab So you want to pick something up you grab it you want to stretch something out you just grab both ends and you stretch it for a lot of people it's their first experience in a Vive or even in VR in general and I think a lot of people really pull to our game because of that, because it's so one-to-one with the real world. Like, you feel like you're in this bizarre, surreal, you know, kind of Mario-esque, like, vinyl toy land, but physics acts like physics do in real life. You can juggle, you can throw things, you can toss a pin and pop an object, and everything kind of behaves the way that you would expect it to in real life.
[00:02:07.663] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'm curious because I had a chance to talk to both you and Colin at the PAX Prime in Seattle, and you had just been just a few months or so into development, so you've had more time to add more stuff. So at the time, it seemed to be a pretty minimalist approach of just having maybe three or four different types of objects and mechanics. But since then, what are some of the new things that you've discovered or added to the process of building these contraptions?
[00:02:33.826] Sarah Northway: So we have been focusing a lot on playfulness. So our game is, you know, goal driven, there's 50 levels, you want to beat them all. But you can also just kind of hang out and enjoy the space you're in. So we have added, I think, since you saw it last, we've added like tracer balls that you can attach at all the different snap points of your contraption you're building. And they kind of have a line, like a colored light that comes out behind them. So you can use them to make kind of a spirograph thing that just draws like art in the air. You can actually use them very functionally to be able to see where things are moving in your contraption. So you can tweak something that's not spinning quite right. But mostly it's just about fun. You can just grab them in your hand and spin around. They also bounce really high. They're like these high-powered bouncy balls. So you can chuck them against a wall and catch them again. So we've been adding a lot of things that are like that, that are just for play. This month we also added music to the game. So all of the items in the game, when you pass your hand through them, they'll make a tone of some sort. So all of the wheels, depending on what orientation the wheel is, will be a different drum sound. And you can just sit and, you know, play on the drums. You can build yourself a drum kit, like in the game, and learn to play. Also the rods make a tone based on their length. So we've got a full octave in there and you can build yourself a xylophone and play it. And we actually took, so originally we had a little bit of like atmospheric kind of music. We took that out of the game because the idea is now you're playing the music as you're making the contraptions. Yeah, so we've had a lot of fun with that. The other thing that we've been focusing on, we really didn't want to have a menu system, but we wanted to have saving, loading, sharing online, all that stuff's very important. Hopefully we're going to have level editor at some point, so you're going to want to browse other people's levels, but we didn't want to do a traditional menu because it's VR and we want to do everything differently. We instead have this kind of helmet inside the game that you put on, so it's like you're entering VR in VR. and when you do that you go into a world within our world which is like this kind of dark alternate reality and everything is you know a little creepier kind of ghostly because the normal game is very bright and sunny and happy and in the alternate reality there are tables that contain all the save games that people are sharing or you know your personal collection of curated solutions that you've done and the level select and the credits are like little figurines you can pick up and our artist Lindsay has just been adding all kinds of little secrets and hidden things in there so there's like a jigsaw puzzle you can put together and there's there's dice you can roll that like do things depending on what you get yeah it's really fantastic. So the base game is still the same, we've made a ton of levels for it, but all the stuff we've been adding has just been experiential, enjoy VR, testing out new things that you can do in there.
[00:05:35.162] Kent Bye: So because each object has a tone now, when you actually hit go, you know, when I talked to you last, I hadn't actually had a chance to play it and I've since played it and sort of discovered that, you know, when you're first building your contraption, you're kind of building it in zero gravity. And when you hit go, then everything drops down and then it starts to move forward based upon whatever different objects you've put in the goal is to get from point A to point B. But as it's moving and going, are these objects actually playing and making music as well?
[00:06:02.249] Sarah Northway: So I'm not actually sure if the code is on right now for the version, the demo hall here, but yes, the idea is we want you to be able to make like a player piano or like a little music box, right? That like could hit itself at exactly the right time or just like, you know, has a certain kind of melody that it plays. We've certainly tested it and it sounds like really cool. Yeah. We really like it. Yeah. The drums are especially kind of funny when they're hitting the ground like bong, bong, bong, bong. Yeah. It's, it's pretty great.
[00:06:29.938] Kent Bye: So tell me the story of one of your favorite contraptions.
[00:06:32.981] Sarah Northway: So the contraptions that I really like to make aren't super functional. Like one of my favorite things to make is the kind of spirograph idea that I talked about earlier. So just to make a contraption that never leaves the build area, but that moves around. So kind of a perpetual motion kind of thing that just like does some kind of spinning or I really like you know when you take the wheels off of the ground they'll spin around instead of spinning against the ground and moving they'll just kind of spin in a circle so you can make things that are like a giant you know windmill kind of feeling thing and then you put little tracer balls all over it and you just lie on the ground and watch it go. That is one of my favorite things to do in there. I've also made some wonderfully epic messes, which I think a lot of them have been captured on video lately. So we've been doing Twitch streaming. Every Thursday at noon, we do a Twitch stream from our home office slash our living room, which is now a giant green screen. And we take turns beating levels for the delight slash whatever. So sometimes it's a bit of jeering from the chat, but it's really fun. And I have definitely made some horrific, behemoth, monstrous solutions during that time where I'm just like, well, it just needs more wheels. I'm pretty sure that's what it needs, right? Things just get a little out of hand. It's been a lot of fun, yeah. But that's my role in our column. We'll come in and do a beautifully elegant solution. Lindsay, our artist, will make something completely beautiful. Gord, our sound guy, will do something with sound that's wonderful. And then I just make a mess. and you can play the game anyway. It's all fun. There's no time limits. There's no max number of items you can use. You can play however you want to play. And if you can manage to beat a level by just having a couple sticks fall over and fling the ball into the goal, good for you. That's pretty rad.
[00:08:23.037] Kent Bye: So, it's interesting that you're creating a contraption that's not going away from you because it's just in your immediate field of view. From a VR design perspective, talking to Paul Bettner when they were doing a lot of these mini-games trying to figure out what the strengths of VR were and they found that, like, they made one game where they were, like, having a spoon on your chin and the ball was coming at your face and you were catching it and they found that things coming at you in VR actually way more compelling than going away because the stereoscopic effects are higher and you know they also for Lucky's Tale they're doing what they call the sweet spot of VR which is like close to you because when objects are near to you in the near field then first of all you have like more neurons in your brain that are processing information from like the width of your hand out like you just have more neurons that are processing that information that To me, I think is a lot of reason why something like Tilt Brush is so compelling is because you're in the near field and you're able to paint stuff in your immediate surroundings and then be able to walk around it and really get the stereoscopic effects. But it sounds like you're kind of doing something similar, like you're creating your own kind of like contraption Tilt Brush to be able to like use the near field to make your brain go crazy.
[00:09:31.715] Sarah Northway: Yeah, absolutely. We've been really inspired by Tilt Brush. Like, yeah, being able to make something that's right in front of you and that you can you can even stick your head into is really fun. So we've definitely been thinking about that a lot. Not everyone is comfortable with that experience, I guess at first. But I totally agree that it is one of the most fun, wonderful things of VR is like messing with your senses, like directly by your head. Like our helmet, it's like a deep sea diver kind of helmet that you put on to enter the save load world. And it actually freaks a lot of people out to put this thing on their head. And it's like, if you're already wearing a mask, like, is it really so different? And they'll be like, I don't know if I don't want to put this on my head. But I think that is one of the most visceral kind of experiences that you can get in VR. That and heights, because I'm totally afraid of heights and our game takes place on a series of little islands floating in the sky. Occasionally, there'll be a map where you spawn and there's a hole in the ground. Functionally, you have to get down in there and pick something out or something. But it freaks the crap out of me sometimes to accidentally spawn too close to the hole and I'll feel like I'm falling in and I'll like jump to the ground trying to get my balance and realize it's not real. So I really like messing with that stuff, like quite a bit. Yeah, and some people don't feel comfortable so much with the ground bisecting their waists. So we are thinking In the future, after launch, we'll probably do versions of the game that are different scales, that aren't necessarily room-scale one-to-one with reality, and that is something that we're toying with, that we're realizing, that just bringing the ground up to your waist and then scaling everything down is kind of upsetting for people. For some people. I have no problem with it. Like, weirdly, I can just You know, I feel like I'm swimming or something, right? It's like, this ground is just kind of water I can move through. But it definitely gives some people the kind of heebie-jeebies, you know, VR, like this isn't right. So we're looking at other solutions we can do where there's kind of a table floating in front of you, or you can optionally choose to have a space around you that isn't actually bisecting your chest or whatever. But it is really interesting how people can get so immersed in the world that, you know, you do something like accidentally spawn a contraption in the middle of them and they just freak out, like, I just got skewered through the chest by something, I'm going to die now. And you're like, no, it was just, yeah. So we've definitely had to think about that, like moving people. Our level transition involves hitting, there's a cute little dog who sits in the corner of the level, who's got a big button for a face, it's button the dog. So you have to go over and kind of punch the dog's button. And just moving out of the center of the level is what we want you to do so that you don't notice the spawning and you don't accidentally get a piece of level in the middle of your body. And it works pretty well. But that's definitely an issue that all games and all VR content is going to have, at least at first, until people are more comfortable with the idea of, like, this feels really, really real, but I know it's not actually real.
[00:12:39.261] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know I've heard from people who are doing like Oculus Rift development, because it's a sit-down experience, you have to kind of do a calibration for where people are oriented, depending on how tall they are. But for room scale, I've also heard that it's just sort of like a golden rule that you don't mess where people's feet are. And it sounds like by doing that, it does tend to be uncomfortable for some people.
[00:12:59.953] Sarah Northway: Yeah, for sure. Definitely when you get used to the one-to-one with reality and then suddenly the camera, like your eyes take off and start flying around, it's completely disorienting and everybody immediately wants to rip the headset off. If you've told them that this is like reality, you can't then launch them into the space or whatever, right? Like, I've talked a lot about how cool it would be to have kind of a portal-type game, right, because Valve is working on the HTC Vive and everyone thinks they're doing Half-Life 3, and they've said a million times they're not. They haven't said anything about a portal game either, but, right, we would discuss it, we'd think about it, and then immediately you're like, well, that would be the worst thing ever, because you would go from walking around on solid ground to suddenly being launched through a wall or you know flung tumbling through space or whatever and it's just I'm not sure there's a way to do it. I don't really know. One of the best examples we've seen of a movement mechanic is here is budget cuts. So the way that they do it you don't launch yourself you launch like a little ball that has a camera in it and you can watch in a kind of little mini-map you can see where the camera is and where it's going and then you can teleport yourself to that space, but you never actually move your own vision, only this little picture in picture thing.
[00:14:16.897] Kent Bye: Yeah, and there was also a Made with Unity ad that featured both you and Colin working on the Fantastic Contraption. And I think, I don't know if it was part of doing that that you actually generated like a separate camera within VR to be able to film some of these, you know, mixed reality scenes. But, you know, talk a bit about like how that came about to start to both create, whether it was from a promotional standpoint or whether you always had in your mind to be able to do live Twitch streaming of mixed reality.
[00:14:44.595] Sarah Northway: Oh, it totally just came out of wherever. Like, it was a whim we had one day that Colin kind of said, like, hey, you know, I think it might be possible to merge a webcam feed with our game. And by the end of the day, we had some kind of prototype. And by the end of the week, we had a better version. And then we got a green screen. And then now it's just gone out of control. So our basic technology for it is we use Unity. So you just kind of take the position where the headset is in the world. and you kind of draw a plane that is orthogonal to the camera, where the camera is looking at you from. And then everything in front of your head becomes one camera view. Everything behind your head is a second camera view. And then we take a real life webcam and we sandwich those three layers together. And that is our insane mixed reality stream, which we are showing on Twitch every week, noon on Thursdays. And it's been super fun. So we've set it up so you can just watch someone walk around our living room playing the game. the pieces appear in front of them, the world is behind them, it's been really really cool. A lot of people who watch it and then play the game say that it's like the best way to explain VR, explain how it really feels to be there playing it, and it does. I think it's a lot better than the standard kind of first-person cameras which are usually very jittery and they don't really tell you how it feels to be in it. They make the experience seem a little frenetic and in your face and it's not, right? It's a very, like you're just there. It's very peaceful. You can, you know, see stuff out of the corner of your eyes.
[00:16:18.419] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think it's really super compelling to be able to watch it and see it because it does kind of feel like you're watching somebody that's in this fantasy world and it's just really cool to see that. Why do you think that people watch?
[00:16:33.256] Sarah Northway: So we were featured by Twitch for a while and we got a lot of people who would just come on and go, what the hell is this? And they had to stick around to find out. And I think that's what it is. It's just no one's ever really seen this before. And people find that super compelling. you know, and then they can yell at us in the game and we'll actually yell back or they can give us advice on whatever's being built, like, oh, it needs more wheels, or like, oh, you're doing it wrong, you need to twist that piece backwards, or, you know, shout suggestions for new things we could try out. It's a fun game to play communally, and I guess that extends to people on the internet watching.
[00:17:10.253] Kent Bye: Yeah I think one of the things that you had said last time that we talked was that there's an element of surprise in Fantastic Contraption because you are building this in zero gravity and when you hit go you have some idea what might happen but you really don't know until it actually stops and the physics take over and start to happen. So it's really like this you have to create a mental model in your mind as to like what's going to happen with all this physics and It kind of creates this ability for people to be spectators and have their own ideas and thoughts of suggestions. But there's also just a joy at that surprise. Talk a bit about that moment when you first hit go and what goes through your mind.
[00:17:48.043] Sarah Northway: Yeah, so I think a lot of people just get super excited about the physics of the world. So it might happen even before they hit go, right? You can throw objects. If you place it gently, it floats in the air. But if you throw it, you can toss it over the edge. That's actually how you delete stuff. You just kind of throw it off the edge of the island. And there's definitely a moment where everyone realizes that, like, the physics can happen even while the game isn't running, like, while the play state is off, and they just sit there juggling balls and throwing pins and, like, playing with the cat. And I think it's really delightful. And they totally forget that they're playing a game and there was a goal to start with. It is just, it's really cool. And, like, it just feels real. Like, I'm not sure how accurate our physics actually really are. like our pins might be a little straighter throwing than they really would be in reality, and like the arcs might not be quite, you know, our gravity might be a little less or a little more than real reality, but you almost instantly just acquire like a sixth sense for how things are going to work, how the physics are going to work in the world.
[00:18:53.469] Kent Bye: What's some of your favorite stories of seeing people play? You know, you said you're optimizing for play, so what have you seen that you've seen people like have a good time playing?
[00:19:02.545] Sarah Northway: So one of my favorite things I've seen is when someone from outside of the world grabs one of the hands and they do kind of a sword fight with the person in there. So if you're both holding a stick, you can hit each other or not really hit each other, but just kind of play sword fight. Or you can have one person throwing pins. Our little deletion tool is like a little popping pin. You can have one person throwing objects and the other guy chucking with a pin. And of course, the person who has the headset on can see what's going on. The other guy is just kind of a pawn, you know, he's just, where should I throw it? Am I throwing it? Is this working? You can look at the monitor, of course, to see what you're doing. But I love when people merge like that. So we're working on multiplayer. And I am like, just super excited to see people play with like two people in the same space together. So this will be multiplayer, two players, and you'll be, you know, separate vibes, separate houses, whatever, joining up together. But I am just, I'm very excited to see what people do with their friend, even if we don't design specific game types or anything fancy, just to be able to see someone else in the space and to have little interactions with them would be really fun.
[00:20:16.759] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that's going to be really super compelling. Did you mean before that because there's two Vive controllers that one person would have one and then they would hand it to someone else who wasn't be in-game but they'd be watching the screen?
[00:20:27.533] Sarah Northway: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so one person can actually see what's going on, the other guy is just holding one of the two controllers and just kind of looking at the monitor to see where they are and what they're doing. It works better than you think and it works, it is hilarious in the Twitch streams when we do it, yeah.
[00:20:43.037] Kent Bye: I can imagine some sort of game where they were actually trying to compete against each other or destroy their contraptions or, you know, kind of working against each other as well rather than just collaborative, but I don't know if you thought about that.
[00:20:52.720] Sarah Northway: Yeah, exactly. Well, see, the person in real life, right, who doesn't have the HMD in, they have the advantage of actually being able to see where the other guy is, right? The dude in the game, all he sees is his hand flying around, but he has no idea where his opponent is.
[00:21:07.791] Kent Bye: Oh, that's fun. So, let's talk a little bit about this concept of time dilation because it's come up a couple of times, you know, for example, Karl Krantz said that he was in VR for 12 hours and he didn't realize it and he came out and he didn't realize, he didn't mean to, that's the thing, he didn't mean to be in VR for 12 hours and then all of a sudden, without getting up, taking a break, And then we have this phenomenon I've heard a lot, where people think that they're in an experience for maybe 5, 10 minutes, but it's actually like 35 or 40 minutes. So maybe you could talk about your own personal experience of this concept of time dilation.
[00:21:38.468] Sarah Northway: Yeah, I definitely have the same thing. When we do our Twitch streams, we always aim for about an hour and a half, and we figure, oh, if we're tired, we'll stop after an hour. And every single time so far, this is like eight times in a row, we've gotten to the two-hour mark and had no idea that that much time had passed, and be like, I feel like I've been in here five minutes. Like, I was waiting for my turn to come up again because I'm all excited. I think it is. I think that's what you're talking about, the time dilation. When you're actually in the game, it goes by so quickly. And I've definitely had that experience. Tilt brush is one of my like favorite things to load up in the quiet hours and just kind of draw something. So it's wonderful drawing tool. They use a lot of light kind of pens like so you'll be drawing with light on a black background, which is so wonderful. It's really neat. And I will completely lose track of time and just be in there easily an hour, an hour and a half without really realizing what I'm doing, just tweaking some little drawing or just, you know, playing with it. And there's tools like you can draw with stars and you can draw with glitter and you can just sit there staring at it going, God, this is so beautiful. So I've definitely had that feeling where I'm like, oh, I just want the vibe for a few minutes. I just want to chill out and play something. And then Colin has to come and be like, Sarah, it's bedtime. It's midnight. What are you doing?
[00:22:54.769] Kent Bye: What do you think that is? What do you think is actually happening that you completely lose the concept of time?
[00:23:00.315] Sarah Northway: I'm really not sure. Yeah, I don't really know how it differs from reality. It feels different. It does. And I can't super describe what it is that does it. I mean, I get the same effect, I guess, when I'm really binging on a video game and I'm just like, I forget where the time went. So it might be that kind of feeling, like you're just having fun exploring. But I feel like it might be even more than that. It's definitely different than reality. Like, it's like I've never had an experience like that, where I just lost track of time playing board games or whatever. Like, it's not the same kind of feeling.
[00:23:33.538] Kent Bye: Yeah, what I've heard sort of anecdotally here being at the conference is that someone may have been in an experience for 35 minutes and they come out and they're like, oh yeah, that was like five minutes. And they've been told that it's been 35 minutes and they are indignant of just being like, no, there's no way. There's no way that was really just five or 10 minutes. So it's like this, you know, sometimes we get into like flow state, like the Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, getting into this process of flow where you're just really, but you still have this concept that you don't just lose time like you can in VR.
[00:24:03.562] Sarah Northway: Yeah, it might be the lack of outside distractions, right? You don't see the other people there waiting for you or whatever. You don't see clocks. You don't think about it so much. I've definitely noticed it at the show here today, too. People will be in there for, you know, 15 minutes, which is, you know, it's hard. We want to put a lot of people through the game. We try to give people the best experience and they'll come out going like, more, more, more. What are you doing? I was only in there a second. I was just getting it. And I think a lot of that is just, you know, everyone wants more VR at this point.
[00:24:31.521] Kent Bye: Yeah, the only thing I can think of is that when you're in your VR there's like just so much novelty and newness that maybe it puts those neurons in overdrive almost and a whole life we've gone through with that concept of how much brain processing power it takes to be in reality but then when we go into VR it just puts your brain into overdrive. That's the best that I can think of.
[00:24:51.774] Sarah Northway: It could be like how time moves more slowly for children, right? Because everything is a first for them. It's the first time they've seen this, experienced this. And yeah, it could be like that. We're so used to, in reality, just saying like, oh, it's a ceiling, whatever. It's a sky, whatever. And in VR, you really want to stop, process it, and really pay attention to it. And just all that paying attention to, I guess, is feeding more information into your brain, which then needs to be recorded. And so it feels like more time has passed. Or I don't know.
[00:25:21.895] Kent Bye: Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if anybody's done more looking to this. But just to kind of wrap things up here, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what do you think the ultimate potential of VR is and what it might be able to enable.
[00:25:36.930] Sarah Northway: So VR is going to go in so many directions. I really just believe it's beyond games. It's going to be our new TV. It's going to be our new everything. It's just going to be our way of experiencing anything that's not directly in front of you. It's a few years off. And I think that games are going to be the gateway for a lot of people to start getting into VR, to accepting VR. And I'm just so stoked that our game is going to be one of the first. Great.
[00:26:03.555] Kent Bye: Well, thank you. Yeah, thanks. And thank you for listening! If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
